Subj : Linux for old computer (very)
To   : Sergey Sapronov
From : Richard Falken
Date : Wed Nov 10 2021 05:23 pm

  Re: Linux for old computer (very)
  By: Sergey Sapronov to All on Wed Nov 10 2021 08:44 am

 >    Åα¿óÑγ, All!
 > 
 > There is a laptop, ancient. It only has 128MB of RAM (and a 40GB IDE drive!)
 > What Linux can I install on it? I want to deploy FTN software on it, and a
 > website (with a load of about zero). Is it even possible?
 > 
 >    æ πóáªÑ¡¿Ñ¼ - Sergey

I have a computer with 192 Mb of RAM, and most modern Linux Distributions are
tricky to run with that.

I have found NetBSD and OpenBSD to be good candidates for hardware so old.
Beware you won't have many spare resources. The operating systems idling may
eat 90 to 100 megs, which leaves 40 to 30 for your applications. OpenBSD comes
with a very lightweight httpd server out of the box which (from the top of my
head) eats around 15 megs when idling. NetBSD comes with an even simpler one I
think.

As for FNT software, I don't know the current consumption of such things.

If you want to run Linux and BSDs are not an option, Tiny Core Linux might be
an ok choice. The core of the operating system gets loaded to RAM, so a lot of
I/O typical of old computers is solved, but the footprint is still ridiculously
small.

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